Weekend in the Country with Matthew Williamson

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a far better weekend than I did. Having thrown my neck into spasm on Friday (and then tried to ignore it all day) I found myself in A&E at the crack of dawn come Saturday morning and spending the next 24 hours in a state of spaced out agony on a high dosage of muscle relaxants and painkillers. Least fun thing ever. On an infinitely less grim note, I am extremely excited – and a little nervous – to share the results of my recent collaboration with Matthew Williamson! As you all know so very well, I utterly adore everything Matthew designs. The colours, the prints, the light-as-air fabrics, painstaking details and general joie de vivre exuded from his every garment… I cannot get enough and have never failed to have a magical night every time I get lucky enough to wear one. What now seems like aeons ago, I sat down for a catch up with the MW team and we got to brainstorming about how we might work together beyond my ransacking their showroom at any given opportunity. This was back in March, by which point the fashion world is basically O-V-E-R all things summery so our conversation landed on Pre Fall ’14. Inspired by the idea of the Bright Young Things having a tea (slash cocktail) party in the woods, the collection is a beautiful, dreamlike mirage of painterly blooms, transeasonal tweeds, opulent prints and luscious hues. Think old world, debauchery ready glamour with tailored touches to bring things bang up to date. No one in their right minds would actually wear clothes that exquisite anywhere near woodland but in the hope of creating a story together (and with extreme caution) that’s what we did. Last month Holly and I headed to my parents’ house in Sussex, armed with the best part of Matthew Williamson’s Pre Fall collection and our fingers crossed that we weren’t going to wreck any of it.

The idea behind our shoot was, as you may have guessed, a weekend in the country. Namely, the kind of country house weekend that demands multiple outfit changes, each more elegant than the last, and the revelry continuing until everyone passes out in their party dresses only to wake up and continue the festivities the next day. Without further ado, I can’t wait to hear what you think of the results!

I won’t lie to you, getting this dress in the pool was a slightly stressful experience and we had to get my mum pretty heavily involved in order to achieve the whole “wet look hair” thing without just getting an actually sodden dress effect. I think it worked though, right? There’s also more of this to come as originally we intended to shoot three to four looks absolute maximum but we got a little carried away as the clothes were so divine and we were just having too much fun with the whole thing! The second instalment will be up tomorrow so make sure to check back again then.

OHMYGOD Ella! I don’t think I can put into sentences just how much I have enjoyed scrolling and re-scrolling through these pictures. Everything about this entire shoots screams total perfection. The styling, the insanely serene backdrops and you (obvs). I could easily have had these in between pages of glossy mag and it would have blended in with total ease. You should be incredibly proud for creating such beautiful results.